A business opportunity may be offered to a client in the form of a presentation. The client is a potential customer or current customer of the party making the presentation. The purpose of the presentation is to convince the client to take advantage of the benefits of the business opportunity by purchasing the services or products of the presenting party. If the client is a current customer, then the presenting party attempts to receive additional purchases from the client associated with the business opportunity which is being presented.
The presenting party may be a single individual making an offering of services or products. The presenting party may also be an agent representing another individual, firm, or a large company. Often the presenting party is a team of individuals employed by or representing a large company having a broad spectrum of services and products available for purchase by the client.
The client may also be a single individual, or a team of people who will view and evaluate the business opportunity for a client. Often one or just a few people on the client team will be the key decision maker(s).
The presentation may be either a single meeting or as is more often the case, will comprise several presentation sessions, each covering various aspects of the business opportunity, and each with differing members of the presenting and client teams participating. One aspect of a business opportunity which may be a subject of one or more presentation sessions is a business model of the opportunity including, for example a return on investment (ROI) calculation.
ROI calculations are well known in the business and accounting arts. For example, ROI is described as a ratio of income to investment in Managerial Accounting by Morse and Zimmerman, Irwin McGraw-Hill, Boston 1997, page 477. Calculations for other measures of a business opportunity are also described by Morse and Zimmerman such as internal rate of return (IRR) and net present value (NPV). Certain input values are chosen such as expenditures to be made at certain points in time and expected revenues to be received at other points in time. The expenditures typically represent investments to be made by the client in the business opportunity, including purchases of the presenting party's offerings. The revenues typically represent expected sales from the client based on the investments to the client's customers or potential customers.
Various assumptions may be made about costs, prices, volumes, and other parameters of the opportunity. Financial assumptions are also made about, for example, financing alternative costs, or time value of money. An ROI may then be calculated. Other calculations may also be made such as various break even points, pay back periods, IRR, or NPV.
Although calculators and interest rate tables have been used for such calculations in the past, the use of spreadsheet software tools is now more common. A spreadsheet shall be understood herein to mean a software tool having a two dimensional array of cells in which a user may enter data or formulas in the cells to facilitate entry, calculating results, and recording values. Some spreadsheets permit data of nearly any type to be entered in a cell including a number, a mathematical formula, alphanumeric variable, text, a graphic, an audio or video clip, or an object of any type such as known in the object oriented programming arts. LOTUS 1-2-3® (LOTUS 1-2-3 is a trademark of Lotus Development Corporation, Cambridge, Mass. and EXCEL® (EXCEL is a trademark of Microsoft Corp., Redmond, Wash.) are examples of spreadsheet software currently available which may be used for such calculations.
Independent of the above techniques, various methods have been developed to measure how people respond to information presented on a computer screen. For example, Edwards in U.S. Pat. No. 6,106,119 describes recording eye tracking data of a test person viewing scenarios and virtual pages. The recorded data is then analyzed to determine, for example, the sequence in which the test person views various items on a virtual page, or mental states (e.g. reading a block). The sequence or mental state may be superimposed on the virtual page, for further study. The mental states are deduced from patterns of elementary eye tracking data such as fixations and saccades using methods described in Edwards' U.S. Pat. No. 6,102,870.
Tognazzini et al. in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,731,805, 5,831,594, 5,866,683, and 5,898,423 describe monitoring the gaze position of a computer user, and selecting information to be displayed based on the gaze position. The display may be expanded in a gaze area. Text may be highlighted to indicate last gaze position before the user looked away, making it easy to return to the point of departure. Additional information may be presented regarding a topic on which the gaze of a user paused. The additional information may be text, visual, or sound.
Weinblatt in U.S. Pat. No. 4,075,657 describes an apparatus for tracking eye movement in response to visual stimuli, such as advertising, on a screen.
Jakob Nielsen in “Non Command User Interfaces,” published in Communications of the ACM, April 1993 vol. 36, No. 4 pp. 93-94 describes use of eye tracking data as a potential input device for a paddleball video game. He also describes an application in which information presented in a window is updated whenever a user looks from some other point, to the window. The window is updated to contain information about the last point viewed before looking to the window. In another application a speech synthesized narration is changed to go into more detail about a feature on the screen to which a user starts to pay special attention as deduced from the user's eye movement.
N. Hari Narayanan in “Exploiting Gaze Data for the Analysis and Synthesis of Visual Interactions,” published as a research report of the Visual Information, Intelligence & Interaction Research Group of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering of Auburn University, Auburn, Ala. describes using gaze parameters from eye tracking data, in conjunction with speech and haptic inputs to control an interactive system and navigate through it.
Kado et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 5,410,609, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety, describe an apparatus for identification of individuals which involves inputting a facial image of an individual. The image is compared to a database of expressionless images of individuals and difference vectors determined. Movement vectors for expression muscles are stored in a database of expression muscles for each of the individuals. Expression muscles are used when facial expressions are made. A judgement is then made as to whether or not the difference vectors are due to the expression muscles.
Other identification methods for individuals involve taking an image of the iris of an eye of an individual. For example IBM and Schiphol Group have announced an airport security system using a camera and software components to compare a person's iris with data stored on a smart card. See, for example, the articles “IBM to Unveil Biometric Pact,” by K. Delaney and P. Prada in the Wall Street Journal Apr. 25, 2002 page D-5, and the press release “IBM Looks Airline Security in the Eye,” Apr. 25, 2002 which is incorporated herein by reference.
During a presentation, the presenting party receives both spoken and non-verbal feedback from the client. An astute presenting party will make use of such feedback to alter the presentation by, for example, emphasizing a particular point, or providing additional information on some aspect than would otherwise be provided. However, the presenting party frequently misses some non-verbal feedback because the demands of making the presentation have the presenting party looking elsewhere than at the client at the time a non-verbal facial expression, or gesture or other non-verbal feedback sign is made. Furthermore, although eye contact with the client may be desirable in certain circumstances, continuous staring at the client may be considered impolite or undesirable for other reasons. Also it may be difficult or impossible to simultaneously observe all of the members of a client team.
An improved method of presenting a proposed business opportunity to a client which makes use of non-verbal feedback would therefore constitute an advancement in the business proposal arts.